“The world can no longer avert its gaze from the famine unfolding in Yemen” – New Report Highlights State of Starvation in Yemen as COVID-19 Takes Hold.

Manchester, UK: Humanitarian charity Human Appeal has released a report, Half a Decade of Hunger: How Conflict Has Starved Yemen’s Future Generations, detailing the impact of the five-year war on people’s health and the alarming levels of malnutrition in children. The report also looks at how Yemen is coping with the COVID-19 pandemic in light of its existing struggles. Recognised as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, 80% of Yemen’s population requires aid.

Both in their report and online, the charity has been highlighting some people’s stories as they face an onslaught of COVID-19, conflict, starvation, and the quick spread of other fatal diseases such as cholera.

Over 20 million people in Yemen are food insecure, and the vast majority are in urgent need of aid. As a result, children are being born only to waste away, and an entire generation of Yemenis are being starved out of existence.

Dr Mohamed Ashmawey, Human Appeal CEO said: “The world can no longer avert its gaze from the famine unfolding in Yemen. Yemenis are being starved of a future in a perfect storm of conflict, food shortages and a mix of fatal diseases including COVID-19 and cholera. “Yemen is already the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and the situation will become more acute as international aid has been dramatically cut forcing closure of 75% of vital UN programmes.

“Our report makes uncomfortable reading, but we urge people to recognise the severity of the situation, and to join our call for the international community to act, so that Yemen can begin to recover.” In the report, testimonies from doctors on the ground in Yemen also reveal the grim reality of how a country completely unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic, and with little to no means of treating its victims, has been overwhelmed by events, leading to even more starvation. Active in Yemen since 2014, Human Appeal has helped over 900,000 people, and has recently launched an emergency appeal in response to the suffering seen as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The charity will be providing food and medical aid to 26,000 people through food pack distribution and support to hospitals in Sana’a and Taiz governorates, and has distributed 7,700 hygiene kits to try and curb the worst of the pandemic.